Transmission Upgrade

The fun stops at the end of the onramp. Your hi-po small-block spins up to 3500 rpm as the speedo needle settles at 60 mph, and a Yugo honks and blasts by on the left doing 80, hoisting the single-digit salute. Sure, you can beat anyone up the onramp and in brief forays to Ludicrous Speed, but the thought of traveling more than five miles at a normal highway pace is out of the question.

Sustained high speeds bring images of bearings wearing, valvesprings fatiguing and every other engine part screaming in pain. Its more than your nerves can take. Thats what you get for 4.11 gears and no overdrive: low e.t.s and great fun around town but living hell on the freeway. But take heart, HOT ROD has the answer. Swap that antiquated nonoverdriven gearbox for the latest in high-tech O.E.M. hardwarethe Borg-Warner T56 six-speed.

The T56 is the same unit that comes in new Camaros, Firebirds and Dodge Vipers, and Borg-Warner is now offering an aftermarket version to fit older cars. Whats so trick about it? The T56 not only offers overdrive, it offers two overdrives. In the aftermarket unit, Fifth gear is a .84:1 ratio and Sixth gear is .62:1.

Borg-Warner designed the aftermarket T56 so that it bolts directly in place of a T5 five-speed, so installing one in your T5-equipped late-model Camaro or Mustang is no big dealits almost a straight remove-and-replace procedure. Still, we wanted to know what would be involved in bolting the T56 into an older street machine with a conventional clutch and manual linkage, so we set about the task of bolting it into a 69 Camaro. While we wont kid you and say that it was an easy two-hour project, we will tell you that its not that tough.

Pricing depends on the independent distributors that will be selling the T56, but at the time of this writing, it was in the neighborhood of $2500. Midwest Truck & Auto Parts, D&D Performance and Perfection Hy-Test are the three known distributors at this time. Compare that price to other aftermarket or factory five- or six-speeds (most notably the ZF) as well as a bulletproof four-speed overdrive automatic trans, and youll see that the T56 is an affordable swap. Weve also featured the other two six-speeds on the market: the ZF (found in Corvettes) and the Richmond Over Drive (ROD) six-gear. Borg-Warner also has the T56 for Ford applications, but its a different unit than what were profiling here.